REVIEWS / PRESS COVERAGE

Travel out to Florida Boulevard for Asian adventure

by Stephanie Riegel

“When you walk into Vinh Phat Oriental Market on Florida Boulevard near Flannery Road, you feel as if you have crossed a portal into another world and are suddenly far from home. Tightly packed shelves are crammed from floor to ceiling with more than 15,000, mostly Asian, food items that seem strange and exotic to Western eyes but are, of course, quite commonplace in their countries of origin.”

Market Watch: Vinh Phat

by Kaci Yoder

"The store’s offerings come as large as 50-pound bags of rice and as small as tiny jars of bean curd, from the usual Asian imports like Pocky and milk candies to the unusual like cuttlefish tentacles and yellow snail. Sauces and pastes fill one long aisle, Chinese characters mixing with recognizable Kikkomans and Srirachas. Walk a little farther to find a seemingly endless seasoning selection and teas for everything from internal cleansing to sexual enhancement.

The bottom line? If it’s an Asian delicacy and you want it, Vinh Phat probably has five different kinds."

Secret ingredients

by Maggie Heyn Ricardson

“Vinh Phat does draw native Asians as well as curious foodies eager for new inspiration and the raw materials for their culinary adventuring. Michael Thai says while the store’s customer base was once dominated by Asians and Pacific Islanders, it now draws about 40% Caucasians. Among them are frustrated vegetarians, caterers, gourmands and students from the Louisiana Culinary Institute—each on the hunt for illusive, exotic ingredients they find sitting on Vinh Phat’s sprawling aisles and overstuffed shelves.”

Going exotic at Vinh Phat

by Rachael Upton

“Vinh Phat is one of those public secrets. It’s out of the way for most, far past Cortana and halfway to Denham Springs on Florida Boulevard, in what’s called the “Far East Plaza,” populated by Vietnamese restaurants and coin-op laundries. But inside the large building that dominates the shopping center is a world of Asian food just waiting to be discovered.”

Just How Do You Cook a Thousand-Year-Old Egg?At Vinh Phat, a whole world of fascinating flavors awaits adventurous home cooks

by James Fox-Smith

“We are adrift in the aisles of a grocery store, the shelves of which are lined with hundreds of things in brightly colored packages, but we scarcely recognize any of them. Dozens of varieties of dried noodles teeter in disorderly stacks. Promising-looking sauces and pickled somethings and exotic spices are piled from floor to ceiling. One aisle seems to be entirely devoted to brands of dried seaweed. Another sports about fifty sorts of soy sauce. Is that a couple of dozen duck eggs on the counter? Even the fruit and vegetable section seems intimidating. What, for example, is this huge, prickly, green thing? Or this bundle of what look like two-foot-long green beans? A huge stack of golden mangoes looks inviting, but what are we going to do with them? If it all sounds impossibly exotic—the sort of thing you’d expect to find in a market in Hong Kong or Hanoi or Jakarta—you’d be right. Except that this one is no further afield than Florida Boulevard. The store is Vinh Phat, a grocery that has been delighting devotees of Asian cuisine—and disorienting everyone else—in Baton Rouge since 1984.”